Page 247 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

ordinary and the extraordinary, the possible and the impossible. The aim of the Festival is to help
stretch the limits of the imagination, and to reinforce the intrinsic value of imagination in films.
Since its inception in 1995, over 430 films from 34 countries have been screened at the Fantastisk
Film Festival, including shorts, documentaries and feature films. Now, each year during 10 days in
September, Lund, the idyllic university city of southern Sweden, becomes a meeting place for film-
audiences, film-business and filmmakers from all over the world. Here everyone is offered a unique
opportunity to get acquainted with the best and the latest within fantastic cinema.
In addition, the Festival offers lectures, exhibitions and other festivities in connection with
fantastic film. Because of the international flavour of the Fantastisk Film Festival, the majority of
the films screened also receive their Swedish premiere. Sometimes the Festival focuses on different
directors (Shinya Tsukamoto, Peter Jackson, Brian Yuzna), interesting countries (Hong Kong, Korea,
Spain) or specific themes (Japanese Animé, the tales of Astrid Lindgren).
Special focus, however, is always on the European continent, which contributes at least 70 per
cent of the films, and the Fantastisk Film Festival is accordingly member of two important networks
for the promotion of European cinema: European Coordination of Film Festivals and European Fed-
eration of Fantastic Film Festivals. Together with the latter, the Fantastisk Film Festival is hosting one

of its several international competitive sections, the Méliès Competition. 1

Xavier Mendik: What was the original motivation behind the Festival?
Magnus Paulsson: To create a festival for adults, as we already have a very good film festival for
youths and kids - BUFF, here in the south of Sweden. We didn't want to start a 'normal' festival.
We already have three of those in Sweden - Goteborg, Stockholm and Umeâ. As all the founders
were big genre buffs it was pretty easy to decide the theme of the festival. So we borrowed the
word 'fantastique' from the French and created the first Swedish genre film festival - Fantastisk Film
Festival in 1995.
How has the Festival changed over the years?
It is constantly growing, both in size and attendance. When I started it, we ran for just five days,
now it goes on for ten days. We have started to run a 'best of F F F ' just after the Festival at the
Cinematek at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen to create awareness of our event. We are
members of the European Coordination of Film Festivals and European Fantastic Film Festivals
Federation - www.melies.org. We started from scratch and created a festival which has now grown
into a big international thing.
What traditions of the fantastic exist in Sweden?
Not really very many! We totally lack the tradition of fantastic films in Sweden. We start from
a position of invisibility, so we have always had to fight with the cultural establishment to get
recognition of the genre films we love so much.
The programming of the Festival seems to reflect both a European as well as a Far Eastern focus. How
important are these differing traditions of the fantastic film to the Festival?
We want to show a broad spectrum of the world of fantastic films to our audience. Our focus is
to promote genre filmmaking in Europe, by showing some of the best features and shorts that have
been produced over the last two years. It is also very interesting to show the audience here that there

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